" There have been some fierce legal battles about identifying the nationality of the bearer in the Israeli Identity card. As of 2005, the nationality has not been printed; a line of eight asterisks appears instead. In the past, the nationality of Jewish Israelis was indicated as "Jewish", rather than "Israeli". In 2002, the Supreme Court of Israel instructed the Interior Ministry to indicate the nationality of people who underwent a Reform conversion as Jews. The Minister at the time, Eli Yishai, a member of Shas, an Orthodox party, decided he would drop the nationality category altogether, rather than list as Jews people whom he considered non-Jews. In 2004 the Supreme Court denied a citizen's petition to reinstate this indicator, stating that the field in the document was meant for statistical collection only, and not as a declarative statement of Judaism. Currently, the only way to determine whether an Identity card belongs to a Jew is to check whether the Hebrew date of birth appears in addition to the civil date. "

Prior to 2005, your provenance figured on your card. This could not have been for 'security reasons' since it would say if you are Russian, or whatever. Currently, according to the wikipedia article, the card will inform the cops if you are jewish or not, and nothing else.And how the hell does the system know you are jewish to begin with, anyways? Is there a rabbi poring over birth records?I have always wondered about these sort of things, especially concerning the Saudi ban on non-muslims in Mecca. No such thing as a card-carrying muslim.

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